AgWired Blog Screen Shot

Brief, informal thoughts on some agricultural industry blogs that I like and some food for further thought. Have some additional opinions on the subject? Leave a comment below, or let me know by e-mail.

Best use of a variety of new media tools

Ag Wired. An interesting hybrid journalism/PR/paid content blog that’s skewed towards white-collar marketing types that work in the agriculture industry. It’s got content, content and more content, and these guys are using everything available to them, podcasts, photo streams, video clips, Twitter, Twitter chats and more. Bonus points for organizing all this into a usable design. Result? If you’re in their target audience, you’ve probably heard of the Zimmermans.

Best analysis

Fresh Talk blog. The national editor of The Packer, a trade publication aimed at the produce industry, goes deep into his niche and uses his long-time industry experience to post analysis and content that you can’t find anywhere else. I highly suspect University of Illinois’ Farm Gate could vie for best in this category as well, but I don’t read it as frequently.

Best corporate blog?

Dosatron. I love the concept of this blog, especially the posts that show unique ways to use the company’s products. The practicality appeals to me. And they illustrate the concepts with on-site photos. It’s a fairly new blog, and they haven’t posted a massive amount on ag or hort, but I’m looking forward to seeing more from these guys.

Getting into the game yourself?

For corporate blogs: Think hard about your intended audience. Are they really interested in hearing about John Doe’s appointment to middle management? They might be, but remember to think critically when you’re looking for topics. Give your audience a reason to come back to your site or to continue opening your e-mail newsletter. Give them something they can use.

For journalistic or content-focused blogs: Are you really putting some effort into it and not just re-hashing your Google news feed? (Been there, done that. It works to a certain extent, but if that’s all you have to offer, you aren’t doing squat to build a long-term relationship with your audience.) Frequency is important but quality, original content is key. A balance of both shows you’re serious and builds traffic and your online reputation. 

First Lady Michelle Obama joins kids to help harvest vegetables from the White House Kitchen Garden.

A good bit of my writing and communications work has involved the agriculture industry. I started in this line of work about a decade ago, but it’s only been recently that anyone at social gatherings seemed to be even remotely interested in what I did for a living.

I’m not sure to what degree this indicates a national phenomenon, a local movement or that I’m somehow improving on previously poor conversational skills. I find the last unlikely, so I’m inclined to ascribe this moderate level of new-found popularity to the first two.

It seems as if everyone is talking about food and agriculture these days (to prepare for your next party, see popular subjects Omnivore’s Dilemma, Food Inc. and/or the Obamas’ White House Garden.) It’s also interesting to note developments on a more local level, such as the recent developments at the Agroecology Minor Program at nearby land-grant university N.C. State. (See this recent article on the school’s program in Edible Piedmont, a new magazine about local food in my region of the country.)

A friend recently invited me to a charcuterie class at the Raleigh Whole Foods. This was the first time I had been to the Raleigh store, although I had known it to be a popular lunch spot for many of my colleagues over the years. The place was packed with customers, and it surprised me to hear that the Raleigh location is a leader or strong No. 2 in sales for many product categories amongst the chain’s southeastern stores. I was also struck by the number of people in the class who were genuinely interested in where their food came from, not to mention the number who, unlike me, already seemed to know what charcuterie meant.

Whatever you call it—alternative agriculture, slow food, the sustainable food movement—I’ve never seen the subject rise so high in general public discourse, as well as in the social circles I run in. As for the surging local interest, I don’t know if this is a reflection of the larger national trend or if a lot of people in Raleigh are especially into this stuff.

I’ll be sure to ask at the next party I’m invited to. Look to hear from me on the results in at least the next couple of years.

Another excellent blog from my friend Taco Tuinstra at Tobacco Reporter magazine. This time, Taco is back in Africa, following a shipment of Malawi burley tobacco as it makes it way from the Lilongwe auction floors to the port of Beira in Mozambique.

Entertaining in itself, but also an interesting look at how a raw agricultural product travels through the logistical chain in this part of Africa.

http://www.movingtobacco.blogspot.com/

One of my favorite sources for agricultural biotech information, Checkbiotech, has changed the appearance of its Web site and added new coverage to include news coverage of biofuels, alternative energy, life sciences (in Switzerland only, it appears) and orphan.

While I like the look of the site, I hope that they continue their outstanding newsgathering of ag-biotech articles and related e-mail newsletter.

For more about the change, see their press release on Growers for Biotechnology>>

Perhaps unsurprisingly given the surge in corn demand, Monsanto has raised its annual profit forecast after second-quarter earnings rose 23 percent. Increased planting caused Monsanto to sell out of its “triple-stack” seeds.

But, more surprisingly, is that Monsanto’s gain, the largest one-year gain ever, may allow the seed maker to pull even or pass DuPont’s Pioneer unit in U.S. corn, according to this Bloomberg article.

Bayer CropScience announced Friday the completion of two acquisitions that advance the company’s strategy in expanding its cotton seed business. In separate transactions, Bayer CropScience purchased the assets of California Planting Cotton Seed Distributors, Bakersfield, Calif., and the assets of Reliance Genetics LLC, Harlingen, Texas. The combined price for the related transactions amounts to about US$ 20 million.

Read the rest of the press release here>>

Researchers from the University of Florida and the University of Virginia in the U.S. and from Belgium’s Catholic University have developed a GM variety of tobacco mosaic virus that they say protects fruits, vegetables and most other broad-leafed plants from attack by insects. Tobacco mosaic virus normally attacks plants, but the GM version does not. Instead, it produces a chemical known as trypsin-modulating oostatic factor (TMOF). TMOF prevents insects from producing the digestive enzyme trypsin, and is therefore toxic to the wide range of insects that use trypsin to digest food. The press release says that TMOF is not toxic to humans.

The University of Florida press release can be viewed here on Agbios.com>>

This article sums up nicely why no one is growing any GM wheat (the food industry is wary of consumer reaction) and one possible solution for companies interested in bringing something like this to market (try developing traits enhance nutrition or offer some other consumer appeal in order to overcome market opposition.)

Could this solution work for other crops, other markets?

Link to the Reuters article here>>